Tod Bolsinger

“Let’s Put on a Show.”

“Leading is convening.”          Peter Block

My kids have grown up with a few other families that are closer than kin, no matter where our lives have taken us, we have gone out of our way to stay connected to each other, to spend a couple of holidays together each year and on a occasion to vacation together.  The parents are all best friends; the kids are all like cousins to each other. 

And whenever we can get the whole crowd together it’s like all of our small nuclear families take on a “big family”, clan-like feel.  Armed with numbers, they start doing things together that they could never do alone.  Big touch football games on the beach, “Capture the Flag” games in a big grass field, and even more often than not, some kind of production for the parents.

When the kids were much younger (they are all teenagers today), whenever they would get together, someone (usually Kara!) would inevitably come up with the idea of putting on a play for the parents.  After playing in the pool, or frolicking on the beach, the kids would disappear for hours on end to get their “script”, “roles” and “lines” down, only to reappear for the big moment. 

Now, to be sure, the play was never very long…or involved.  Indeed, there was far more going on behind the scenes than in the play itself.  We parents could hear the kids in the other room, arguing over who was in charge, who gets to play what role, who gets to wear what costume and why the boys weren’t “playing along” with the girls.  The debate, discussion, arguments and (yes, a few tears) in the planning process was most of the “drama”.  But inevitably, “the Show (as it were) would go on”.  The tradition continued through the years and last summer, as the kids grew older, “the play” gave way to making a “music video” (and that one was really good.) 

Indeed, they are an imaginative, smart bunch of kids.  They also have relationships built over years that lead them to enjoy doing big projects together.  But the other ingredient is that within the group there a number of leaders who are willing to take a risk at the one thing necessary to bring about new creative endeavors: Convening collaborators. 

And I want to suggest that this ability to pull people together, mobilize them into a working group and pull off a creative project is a critical component of leadership in a changing world.

In this brief series of posts on the To-Do List of the Leader of the Future, I have sought to set out the difference between the mental model of leadership that is often at work in our congregations and organizational contexts today and that which is necessary as we move into the future. 

Leadership of the past was about “action”.  It was about doing something. It was about some expert leader seizing the reigns of the chariot and single-mindedly driving the horses toward finish line.  Leaders were expected to KNOW what to do and then do it.  They were EXPERTS and they were ACTORS.  The leaders were the “Best Practitioners”: the fast-drawing, gun-slinging marshal cleaning up the town, the visionary CEO turning around a company with a new plan, an inspiring President giving simple, clear messages, a Pastor who brings a new exciting program.  Leaders of the past were the “best and brightest” and they accomplished goals through charisma, great ideas, or sheer will. 

But as the world changes, the problems we face are far more complex.  The issues that face our communities and companies and congregations are rooted in deeply entrenched, highly-cherished competing values.  The challenges are far more systemic and the old answers aren’t working any longer.  And one of the key skills of leaders of the future is to bring people together to “co-labor” through the mess and drama of all the various ideas, values, perspectives and agendas to come up with new creative ways of getting things done. 

For community organizer and leadership guru, Peter Block, this act of “convening” is THE act of leadership.  Bringing people together to enter the drama, share the work, listen and hang in with each other, build trust and come up with a new creative approach to an old stuck problem is what leadership is all about.  For Peter Block, this means that the leader of the future is not some charismatic wonder, not some all-knowing expert, and not some official authority, but anyone…ANYONE… who is willing to get people together and say, “Let’s put on a show.” 

Leadership is the capacity to initiate a future distinct from the past, a quality that distinguishes it from management…One way to encapsulate the leadership required to create an alternative future is to consider the leader as primarily a convener-not leader as special person, but leader as a citizen, sometimes with legitimate power, willing to do those things that can initiate something new in the world. In this way, "leader" belongs right up there with cook, carpenter, artist, and landscape designer. All of us can develop this ability with a small amount of teaching, and an agreement to practice-the ultimate do-it-yourself movement.

So if the “Past Leaders To-Do List” looked something like this:
1.    Act.
2.    Act Expertly.
3.    Act Expertly and Quickly (even by yourself, if necessary).

The Future Leader’s To-Do List looks like this:
1.    Say “I don’t know” (about the problem in front of you). 
2.    Resign as the Resident Expert (and become the “Chief Learning Officer”)
3.    Convene Collaborators.

In the next post, I’ll interrupt this list with a personal testimony about how hard it’s been for me to make the transition from the past to the future in my own leadership style and the friends who have been teaching me along the way. 

Leadership Isn’t Trivial Pursuit and Why Most of us Should Just Resign…

Let me begin with an illustration from the world that I know best.  Let’s pretend that you are playing a game called “Church Trivial Pursuit” with the members of your faith community, including your pastor.  Who do you think would win?  In most churches, if the category is “Bible knowledge”, most pastors will win easily.  (Not all pastors, though,…indeed, in my church I’d have some pretty stiff competition from seminary professors, BSF leaders and a whole host of really competent lay Bible teachers).  And, if the categories included “Theology” or, even more “Church History”, well, even fewer will stay with most of the clergy types. 

We pastors know this stuff. We have literally “gone to school” on the scriptures, theology and church history.  We preach and teach at least once a week (usually more) and the necessity of that task keeps sending us back to study up on these topics.   Even more, if the competition included a ‘demonstration’ section on things like “Speaking in Front of Crowds”…we’d run up the score.   Compared to most people in most every other job, we pastors are just really proficient at stepping up in front of crowds and opening our mouths.  (Indeed, most people report fearing public speaking more than death--which means that at a funeral more people would rather be the guy in the box than the guy at the microphone…) 

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, he states that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to become an ‘expert’ or ‘master’ at anything.  Recently I calculated that I have passed the 10,000 hour mark in only one thing in my life:  Talking about the Bible.  Which means that most pastors, like me, are really the resident expert in this stuff.  If leadership, even church leadership, was a game of “technical skill” and “technical knowledge”, about “Public Speaking” and biblical theology, we’d win every time.

But it’s not. 

As we looked at in my last post in this series, the problem in most organizational life is not ‘technical’ but ‘adaptive.’  It’s not a problem that can be solved by an expert, it is a challenge that can only be solved by the community learning, growing, changing and ‘adapting’ to the changing environment around it.

This is the second post in a series on the To Do List for Leaders of the Future.  In the last post, I gave #1 on the list: Say clearly, confidently and boldly:  “I don’t know.”   

Step #2 is even more pointed:

Resign as the Resident Expert.

When an organization is facing an uncertain future in a changing world where there really are no clear answers, (which is clearly the situation today in everything from Government to Girls Scouts) the Resident Experts only make the problem worse. 

BECAUSE Resident Experts are so technically proficient, we are asked to give our “expert opinion” on everything.   This is worsen the problem in at least four ways.

1. Experts in one area (say “Biblical Preaching”) are often assumed to be experts in every area.  (Ever notice how movie stars become experts in global crises during election years.)  This is usually a complete false-hood.  Very few people have the depth and breadth of experience to truly be an expert in more than one area (See the “10,000 hour rule” above.)  I am often asked as a pastor to give expert opinion on matters having to do with building construction, labor law, economic forecasting and city planning (topics they did NOT have in seminary).  When I do, I usually make the situation worse not better.
2. Experts tend to apply the solutions of yesterday (indeed, that is how we became Experts, is it not? The solutions we offered in the past worked), to the problems of today and the challenges of tomorrow.  Experts, as we learned from Eric Hoffer, “are beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists.”  When a community that is facing an “adaptive challenge” uses a “technical solution”  (which is the definition of the “solutions of yesterday”) then not only is the challenge not met, but the new solution often becomes the problem.
3. When a community defaults to an expert, it is avoiding the necessary work that the whole community needs to do.  People stop listening to each other; the community ceases to look for and listen for the often hidden but deeply entrenched competing values that are usually at the heart of the problem.  By defaulting to the Resident Expert, the community itself stops its own growth and the painful irony is that this is usually a precursor to its own slow death.  
4. Most problematic is that cultivating the Expectation of Expertise is a big trap for the leader.  A big-- often dangerous—trap for the leader.  As soon as leaders become the expert in the face of an “adaptive challenge”, they become the problem.  (See #1 above). The Expert becomes the Savior and when their expert advice doesn’t achieve instant results, they all-too-soon become the scapegoat.  Indeed, perhaps the surest way to be an ex-leader begins with being an expert.

So since Leadership isn’t “Trivial Pursuit” and the problems in front of us and looming on the horizon cannot be met by our being the Resident Expert, we than are free to resign as the Resident Expert and instead become the Chief Learning Officer. 

When you are leading a community facing an adaptive challenge, lead the learning.  Lead the process of corporate self-understanding and identifying the competing values that are keeping the community unable to address the challenge of the future.  Lead the process of identifying the core values that “should never change” and those lesser values that absolutely have to change.  Lead the process of helping the community face the brutal facts of the reality of the challenge in front of them.

As Chief Learning Officer, your job is to be in two places at once all the time.  In the words of Ronald Heifetz, "Looking from the balcony and listening on the floor." 

• Looking for systemic patterns and processes that get played out over and over again. 
• Listening to the stories that are told, the heroes that are celebrated, the issues that bring energy to the room and those that make eyes glaze over. 
• Looking for alliances that are being built and people that are being drawn to the conversation (both positively and negatively).
• Listening for the comments that make people jab their fingers in the air and bang the table as they talk.
• Looking for the default behaviors that keep the community from considering new options (“If all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail.”)
• Listening for the ways people are avoiding the real issue they CAN address by focusing on those they can’t.  (Like the comments I often hear in my Presbyterian church circles: “Our church can never be healthy and faithful until our denomination is fixed.”)

The Leader of the Future is not the expert who does all the talking, but the one who is constantly looking, listening and leading the learning--which includes a relational component that may be the single the most important thing for Leaders of the Future "to-do"  that is Step #3 (And is Step #3 for the next post in this series.) 

The Future Leader’s To Do List

 

“Leaders are always answering the call: Act, Act, Act!”  Jim Osterhaus

The Expert Consultant interrupted me, “Tod, that’s all very interesting, but I want to know what you are going to DO.”  If we give you this job, what PROGRAMS will you DO to strengthen the Christian Education of our church?”

Admittedly, I was a bit stunned, and I am not sure I handled it well at all.  I had been in the middle of what I thought was a thoughtful reflection about the context and challenges that our church was facing at that moment in our history.  I was trying to demonstrate that I had a deep understanding of the long legacy, the great potential and, yes, the challenges we faced in a rapidly changing urban culture.  But she cut me off.

That wasn’t what the Expert Consultant was looking for.  Not then, and certainly not from me, the then- 28-year-old College Ministry Director who was interviewing to be the head of the Christian Education Department that Henrietta Mears had once made the envy of the nation.  

She wanted my “To-Do List”. She wanted to evaluate my knowledge and expertise at getting things done.  She wanted to know what was in my bag of tricks, what programs would I implement, what new initiatives would I launch.   So I changed mid-sentence and launched into a long list of programs and ideas that I had.  But mostly I tried to say that we didn’t need to do a bunch of new stuff, we just needed to do what we do better, more consistently and with greater awareness to how the world is changing around us.  I think the famous consultant stopped listening as soon as it was clear that I didn’t have anything “new to-do”.  They didn’t give me the job—at least not after that interview.  But even then I didn’t realize that I was on the leading edge of a sea change in understanding the role of leadership in a changing world.

That was in 1992.  I was applying to take my old boss’ position of Pastor of Christian Education.  The search committee had been looking for a long time with not much luck.  When I heard that the search had stalled, I asked my executive pastor and senior pastor if I could interview for the position.  I was just brash enough to believe that five years of being on the staff gave me insight to actually understand the culture, context and challenges facing us. 

But when the Expert Consultant interrupted me, it was clear she was not looking for someone from the inside who understood the culture, but someone from the outside who would bring in a new “To Do List”, a new bag of tricks.  The Expert Consultant wanted an Expert Pastor.  

They found their Expert Outsider who came highly recommended by the other Experts in the field.  He brought a long “To Do List” and immediately started sending memos, calling meetings, issuing orders, writing new policies and launching new programs.  He was smart (with both an Ivy League pedigree and a degree from a well-known seminary), he was hard working and certainly had a good track record of getting things done at a large mid-western church.  He lasted one year. 

As the Expert Outsider was cleaning out his office, the Expert Consultant came to me with a kindly smile, “Well, that didn’t work out the way we hoped, but we were wondering if you would be interested in the taking the position now.”  And without even knowing it, I was beginning to “unlearn” some lessons about what it meant to be a leader that I am just now figuring out almost twenty years later.

All of my life, I have been told consciously or unconsciously that leaders are experts who “know what they are doing.”  Leaders act and they act expertly.  Leaders have game plans, programs, agendas, a “vision”.  Whether you are running a government or interviewing for an associate pastor position you are expected to know what to do and especially to have a Master Plan of Action.  And this is all represented in the “To-Do List”.  Now, to be clear, I have no problems with a To Do List.  The probably is not Doing, but what we do.  And our biggest problem is that we start doing before we do any deep reflecting.  We do what we do best before we even really know what we should do (or if anything we do will make any difference at all.)

In this series of posts, I want to offer a different kind of “To-Do List”:  A To-Do List for a leader who faces an uncertain future and a changing world.  A To-Do List for those who are leading organizations or communities into uncharted territory.  It is based on the concept of “praxis” (or “reflective action”) and begins with the notion that if we really knew what needed to be done (understood as “technical” competence), it would already be done.  But leadership in the face of a changing world, uncharted territory or an uncertain future requires a different kind of “To-Do List” that is not based in being an expert but being a learner. 

Eric Hoffer wrote:  "In times of great change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists." 

This To Do List is a Learners List.  It is a list for leaders who know that there are no simple solutions.  It is a list for leaders who well understand that if the problems facing them could be fixed with a program, it already would have been fixed. So here is the first item on the “To Do List” leadership in a changing world. 

#1: Say clearly, confidently and boldly:  “I don’t know.”

Future Leaders need to be “adaptive persons” who take on "adaptive challenges."  To do so means that they must have the courage to look at the brutal facts of the challenge in front of them and when asked what they are going to do, boldly declare the blunt truth: “I don’t know.” 

 Saying, “I don’t know” takes confidence and courage.  It takes honesty and humility.  It requires that  people trust you and that you trust the people that you are working with.  It is a really hard first thing “To Do” (indeed, most leaders NEVER do it), but it is absolutely necessary if you are going to lead into an uncertain future, uncharted territory and a changing world.  Because when you say those words out loud and when they are truly believed by those who you lead, two things happen:

1)    The challenge ahead is seen with clear-eyed sobriety for what it REALLY is. 
2)    YOU, as the Leader, are then seen with clear-eyed sobriety for who you REALLY are. 

Which leads to #2 on the “The Future Leader’s To-Do List”:  Resign.

Which is where we will pick up the next post.